11/29/2008 - SSF2THDR ROUND 1 Trailer

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix finally arrived on Tuesday and it was worth the wait! I'll give my review of the game in a later blog post, but I wanted to highlight the trailer Capcom released just prior to the game's release. As we all know, Capcom enlisted the artists at Udon to redraw the sprites and backgrounds of the game in the style of their popular anime-inspired comic book series. That art is on full display in this trailer, and as a fan of the anime movie, I can say that it is gorgeous. But we knew that would be the case with this HD version of SF2. Besides showing off the gameplay in a well-choreographed tournament style presentation, Capcom did something very special in this trailer that would prompt me to write this blog entry about it.

Yes, that would be the music in the trailer. The use of "You're the Best Around" by Joe Esposito is truly inspired. Before I knew of it's actual history from the Karate Kid movie, I heard it in a ScrewAttack Top 10 video that played it as a tribute to their fans who submitted their favorite video gaming music. Whoever made that video is probably a fan of cheesy 80's music and this song in particular is really cheesy, but really good! It wasn't until I found my King of Kong DVD that I learned that they had included the song in the classic gaming documentary as well. In fact, this is where ScrewAttack probably got the idea to feature the song, as it was included in the King of Kong soundtrack. So would this cheesy 80's song be some kind of anthem for classic videogames?

The answer would be cemented in this trailer for SSF2THDR. When I first heard it in the trailer, I said "No Way", and then I laughed with glee. I'm not sure if Capcom themselves knew of the links to videogaming this song has recently had, or if they just wanted to feature a retro song from a movie about martial arts, but everything just works in context. So much so that I had to download the MP3 to this song and am seriously considering renting the Karate Kid movie even though it looks so bad. I just have to say that Capcom "is the best arooouuuund!"